


Flight and Capture

by ophelia_interrupted



Category: The Windrose Chronicles - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6194197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophelia_interrupted/pseuds/ophelia_interrupted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antryg is pursued by angry members of the Council of Wizards as he tries to escape from the disaster of the Mellidane Revolts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flight and Capture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solojones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solojones/gifts), [Darthishtar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darthishtar/gifts).



> This story was excerpted from a longer work that I decided would be better broken up into pieces. There are references to Antryg's activities during the Mellidane Revolts (all non-canon), but if they just form an indistinct background, that's fine. Major spoilers for The Silent Tower, none for The Silicon Mage or Dog Wizard.

            This is what happened after our weapons and my magic failed, and Ilae in Mellidane fell.  I was desperate--my dear Gwynne had been killed, along with her family and so many of our friends.  There were districts of the city ruined, partly my fault, I’m afraid, and I obviously couldn’t stay.  I had forsworn my vows to the Council of Wizards, betrayed those who had taught and cared for me, and now the wrath of the Council mages would be coming like the righteous hand of God. 

            I put as much distance between myself and the Empire as I could possibly manage.  I wasn’t so much afraid of the Emperor or the Church, although I probably should have been.  It was the mages who frightened me.  I knew they weren’t happy, because some of those who’d been closest to me managed to contact me in dreams after I refused to be summoned by scrying crystal.  I saw Salteris in my sleep twice, and both times he was very grim.  The second time he was angry.  My orders were to return to the Empire and surrender immediately, or I would be returned home by force.  I saw Aunt Min very briefly.  She had enough time to look at me reproachfully and say, “Yours master has been trying to speak with you,” before I shook myself awake.  It got bad enough that I started struggling not to sleep, just as I had in the days when the Dark Mage Suraklin used to haunt my dreams.

            I traveled overland, mostly by foot, and avoided the witchpaths, which are the ancient energy-tracks that lie across my world.  Mages can travel them at great speed if need be, and I had reason to be wary of swift-footed mages. 

            I ended up in a small village within a region called Augustapol, which is claimed by two somewhat militarily toothless nations, neither of whom can quite manage to occupy it unambiguously.  I could describe it at some length, since it’s actually quite beautiful, but since it’s not all that important to the overall story, I’ll just paint a picture of it briefly.  Augustapol is the sort of place where the tea is first-rate and the opium is world-reknowned, but everything else is a bit dismally medieval.  Both men and women wear long, flowing, brightly-colored garments, and everybody covers his or her hair.  The village I chose to hide in was called Niaphim, not that it matters, really, and it was in a high valley in the mountains.  Villagers grazed sheep and goats upon the steep meadows, and they made tea out of the brilliant orange mountain poppies. 

            My cover story was that I was a traveling physician from the Empire, out to see the glories of the East.  And that I was insane.  The insanity was important not only because even then I couldn’t be relied upon to fake sanity for long periods, but also because it sort of explained why I was trying to see the glories of the East in a tiny mountain village that was far from the trade routes. 

            I really shouldn’t have stopped at all, anywhere, ever.  If I’d had wanted to remain free, I ought to have kept on the move constantly, either in my own world, or perhaps better, throughout a number of worlds.  However, it’s very simple to come up with a plan that involves eternal flight, but very difficult to do it in practice.  Humans simply aren’t built to sleep in a different place every night for the rest of their lives. A person gets weary, and begins to ache for rest.  He gets lonely, as well.  In Niaphim, I negotiated myself some lodgings with an older lady with no living children.  I fetched her water and split firewood for her, and in return I got a bed and conversation.  She was a dear lady and I felt guilty about abandoning her—not that it was my choice.

            I suspect I know which of the villagers tipped the Council off about my whereabouts.  I’d seen him the day before trying to whip a new donkey up the narrow, switchback trail to the village.  I called out to him, and he waved, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.  It’s not everybody who knows with a certainty what his life is worth.  Mine’s worth a jackass with a white belly and three white fetlocks.  The new owner was pulling the beast along with a rope, so I guess I didn’t even warrant any tack.  Good heavens, that’s humbling. 

            Anyway, I was ambushed as I went down to the river just after dawn, to fetch Mrs. Eshakim her water.  As I stood up with the bucket I caught a whiff of sweat and woodsmoke from a dense copse of pines.  I’d been avoiding doing anything that tied up my sword hand for months, so it was nothing to drop my right hand onto the grip of my blade.

            Then there came a great creaking of belt leather and the metallic whisper of weapons being withdrawn from sheathes.  I drew my own sword and dropped into a fighting crouch, glancing around at the clearing and mentally cursing myself for being so stupid as to go to the river in a spot where I could get nothing solid against my back.  I didn’t put down the bucket, having some idea that it might make a good thing to club someone over the head with. 

            In seconds, black-clad figures poured out of half a dozen hiding spots, and then I was encircled by an inward-pointing ring of blades.  They were Council sasenna.  People I’d trained with and joked with and occasionally slept with for years.  A woman directly in front of me was one of the lieutenants from the Citadel of Wizards, and a onetime lady friend.  She hadn’t been the kind of lady friend Gwynne had been, but she’d been a bright and cheerful and willing girl, and we’d had fun.  I nodded to her gravely.  “Hello, my dear.”

            Her voice was the same pretty alto, but this time it was edged like flint.  “Put the sword down, Antryg.” 

            I thought about that.  “Well, I would,” I explained, “only I’m worried that if I did, you might run me through.”

             “We’ll kill you if you don’t,” she said evenly.

            Still the same old Hathen.  I couldn’t help but smile just a little.  I looked around the circle and saw doughty Captain Implek, and the silent Drache, who never seemed to do anything but spar and sharpen his weapons.  There was a curious mixture of scarred veterans and very young people, who I took to be novice mages in their first year of training.  Clearly, the Council had wanted to stack their deck with warriors who could not be foxed by magic.  “You brought the children?” I asked, surprised.  “Implek, this is hardly guarding the cakes in the refectory.”

             “Sasenna are never children.”

             “Not true, and you know it.”  One very young girl apparently didn’t think much of my estimation of her, and she took a slight step toward me, lowering further into her crouch.  I looked at her intently, and realized that although she was most certainly a novice, city-born, conscientious in most affairs but distractible in areas that didn’t interest her, I didn’t know her.  She must have begun her training after I left the Citadel several months earlier.  I did know the boy standing next to her, and I said, “Bannon, tell your little friend that stepping forward unbidden like that only signals that she’s the weakest link in Implek’s chain of command.  Were I the sort of man who’d turn on a fifteen-year-old, she might be in some trouble.”  Bannon opened his mouth as if to reply, and then closed it again.  The girl first blushed, and then her eyes widened as my rebuke turned to a threat, and her flush faded.  She moved back to her wonted place. 

             “As I said.  Children, Implek,” I chided the captain.

            I’d clearly put his teeth on edge.  “Drop your sword or we’ll slit your throat.”

            I glanced around the circle again, and saw only faces that might as well have been carved from granite.  “Your mageborn warriors are all under seventeen,” I pointed out.  “Suppose I overpower them and flee?”  I wasn’t really testing out a plan with Implek, I just wanted a bit of information from him.

            And I got it: “Then the Council will deal with you.”

             “They’re here, then,” I said grimly, and I thought Implek looked a touch annoyed with himself for giving that much away. 

             “Salteris . . . ?” I guessed.

             “What do you think?” Hathen replied curtly. 

            Feeling a bleak sense of grief, I said, “And you’ll lay down your lives rather than let me escape him.  It’s not at all fair of you to hold yourselves hostage like this.”

            A wrinkle of anger appeared between Implek’s black brows.  “You have a damn high opinion of your fighting abilities, wizard.”

            Exasperated, I replied: “Do you think Ilae would still be standing if I didn’t want it to be?  I’m sure Salteris hasn’t forgotten who my first master was, even if you have.” 

            The sasenna captain’s eyes narrowed, and I saw his jaw muscles flex as he mentally recalibrated for the sort of fight he might be facing.  The tip of his blade made a slight correction, pointing more squarely at the pit of my throat, I’m sure.

             “You’re not going to win in the end, Antryg,” Hathen said.  “Make it as easy on everybody as you can.  Stand down.”  I hesitated, looking for an out somewhere.  “Please.”

            Implek shot her a dirty look over the “please,” but I felt some of the fight go out of me.  Hathen was my friend.  So was Implek, when he remembered it.  So were all these people.  I could no more call down fire and death upon them than I could have thrust my own fist into the white flames of a forge. 

             “Hathen,” I replied, almost pleading with her in return.

            Implek’s gaze shot back to me as he heard the change in my voice.  Like a good captain, he struck hard into the gap in my guard that his lieutenant had opened.  “I could whip your arse when you were a boy, Dark Mage training or no, and I can do it again,” he said.  This was almost guardhouse badinage, and I had no defense against it.

            I looked around the circle again, more helplessly this time, and even Drache uncharacteristically opened his mouth: “You’re still open to your lower right, shithead.”  Drache had hit me there again and again while in training.  

            They were now being the people I knew, and whom I loved.  I lowered my blade. 

            Implek snapped Hathen’s name at her, and she rushed forward.  I couldn’t raise a hand to her.  She relieved me of my weapon, and then she looked up at me and said, “And the bucket, Antryg.”

            I made a soft _tsk_ noise, indicating that she wasn’t at all being fair.  She just held out her square, callused little hand, and I pressed the rope handle into it.  She didn’t turn her back on me as she moved back to her place in the circle, but her overall demeanor was much more relaxed.  Implek gave her a curt nod of approval. 

             “Drache.  Bind his hands.  Raina, cover him.” Implek ordered.

            The silent warrior sheathed his blade and the pretty fair-haired Raina came forward with him, her blade leveled at my throat.  My mouth suddenly felt very dry and I swallowed.  I knew what was coming.  Manacles wound through with spell cord, which would cripple my powers.  Once I was chained thus, I’d be all but helpless.

            “Hands,” Drache snapped, when I didn’t immediately hold my wrists out.

             “They’re going to torture me, you know,” I pointed out desperately. 

            Drache didn’t so much as blink at what I said when he put the manacles on me, but Raina had the grace to glance over at Implek. 

             “The Archmage would never stoop to torture,” the captain said.

             “You think this will stop with Salteris?” I asked.  “Where do you think they’re going to put me, Implek?  In the corner at the House of Mages?  It’ll be the Silent Tower, and that belongs to the Church.” 

            I never got to see Implek’s reaction, because Drache pinched my wrists when he padlocked the manacles closed, and my attention was suddenly absorbed by the pain.  As they got ready to march me off, I turned to the young boy I’d addressed earlier and said, “I’m trusting you to make sure Mrs. Eshakim gets her water.”

            The boy obediently picked up the bucket, at which Implek shouted, “Leave it, Bannon!”  As I was led away, I heard the captain cursing to himself about damned wizards giving orders to their own guards. 

            It’s harder to hike up a steep trail with one’s hands bound than you might think.  I staggered twice and almost fell.  The second time, Hathen grabbed my upper arm and held onto it.  It didn’t do much to steady me physically, but I was grateful for the consideration.  As I walked along, I carefully picked at the knots in the silken spell cord twined through the manacle links, all the while keeping my head bowed and my general demeanor as submissive as possible.  Had the spell cord been hemp, there would have been no hope, since the knots were well-formed, but silk tends to accommodate a person who wants to pick knots loose. 

            By the time I was brought into the village square, the cord was entirely loose at both ends, and all it would take to get rid of it was a good, hard tug.  Of course, the manacles themselves were na’ar, or made proof against a wizard’s power, so I wouldn’t be able to immediately unlock them without a key, but if I could get far enough away and find a length of wire, I knew I could pick them. 

            In the village square the Council was assembled.  The entire High Council in one place, which is unusual.  There was Mrs. Sewster, and Bentick and Phormion standing close enough together to foul Bentick’s sword arm.  Aunt Min was there, leaning bent and frail on her cane, and Nandiharrow, who had ascended upon the death of Omad of Rynd.  The eminent Seniors in line for Council position stood ranged behind, including Lady Rosamund, hovering protectively at Aunt Min’s back, and Daurannon, standing at Salteris’ right hand. 

            The seventh High Council member was me, of course.  More or less.

            The sasenna marched me closer, and stopped just short of my erstwhile colleagues.  Implek bowed and said, “We have him, My Lord Archmage.”

            Salteris nodded to him.  “Well done, Captain.”  He turned to speak to me, and then something of my plan must have showed on my face, because after a shocked second he moved to drop back and bring the tip of his staff up. 

            Confusion radiated out from him as I grabbed an end of my spell cord and pulled, yanking it loose from my manacle chains.  Then I tossed it lightly at Salteris as if it had been a ball.  It wouldn’t have hurt him any more than it had hurt me, but as he knocked it away with his staff it blunted his powers for just that second.  The instant he made that swift defensive movement, all of the sasenna’s eyes were on him, and not on me.  Peripherally I spied a very young sasennan standing wide-eyed and gaping, so I darted for him.  In his alarm and confusion, the boy’s hands were only lightly gripping his blade, so I relieved him of it.  Shouldering him out of the way, I dashed back down the slope toward the thicker cover of the river ridge. 

            I’d gotten as far as the tree line when a familiar voice bellowed out: “ _ANTRYG WINDROSE!_ ”

            That was Salteris, who had never spoken to me so in my life. 

            And I stopped.  By God, that man stopped me in my tracks.  Had my mother said my name like that, I would have expected a sound thrashing, thirty-six years old or no.  As it was, I had no idea what to expect.  Lightning?  Fire? 

            If I’d had the brains a goose is blessed with, I’d have kept running, but apparently Salteris had a card up his sleeve that I was not aware of.  I knew I looked on him as a kind of father, but I think I could have run from a parent, especially a punishing one.  But it turns out that he’d become something even worse to me.  At some point when I wasn’t paying attention and he clearly was, Salteris Solaris had become my moral compass.  He was to me what the Bishop of Kymil would have been to my devout family, and I could not defy him without feeling I’d endangered my mortal soul. 

             “ _You will put your sword down!_ ”

            I didn’t put it down, but I didn’t run.  I could hear sasenna striding swiftly down the scree-and-grass-covered slope toward my position.  They had to have wondered what miraculous spell he had aimed at me.  Perhaps the watching Council thought he had made use of the Master-Spells, which the Archmage can use to command a rogue wizard against his will. 

            He hadn’t.  He lifted no physical or magical weapon to me whatsoever, and that’s why I couldn’t run from him. 

            Slowly, I turned around to face him.  I could feel the blood draining from my face, and I must have been dreadfully pale.  The lead sasenna were about four strides from me when Salteris commanded, “Stop where you are.”  They all froze, as it is the Way of the Sasenna to do when their master commands them.  He then turned to the Council mages, who were all hurrying along a bit comically, holding up their robe hems and trying to pick their way along the stony ground without turning an ankle.  “Stay back.  I’ll deal with him.”

             “Salteris—” Daur said, reaching out his free hand.  He was brandishing a sword at me with the other one.

            Salteris shook his head curtly at him, and Daur subsided.  Then the Archmage turned back to me and walked through the high grass.  He did not scramble, but he certainly lost no time closing the distance between us.  He stopped at just about the place where he could have reached me with the end of his staff, but where I couldn’t have caught him with the tip of my sword. 

            I expected him to shout at me again, and I was already mentally preparing myself for it.  He didn’t.  He just held his hand out in a wordless command for me to surrender my weapon to him.  I looked at his hand, and then up at his face.  He was clearly angry.  He was furious.  Furious and disappointed, but there was no hate in his face.  The sudden relief that he didn’t hate me nearly brought tears to my eyes.

            I couldn’t disobey him.  Instead I pled for mercy: “You know what will happen in the Silent Tower.  Don’t do this to me.”

             “We’ll leave Council sasenna to keep the Church in check,” he assured me.

             “The Church won’t feel they can kill me without the Emperor’s say-so, but they can make me wish they would.”  When I could see he was unmoved, I begged, “Please, Salteris.”

            A look of pain broke through his angry resolve, but his dark eyes did not relent.  “You remain a mage, although forsworn of your vows.  We will not abandon you.”  He extended his hand a little further in a mute command.

             “You don’t need to abandon me.  All you have to do is turn your back for a second,” I said.

            Salteris’s silvering black brows turned upward at the inner edges, as if he’d seen that I was not rebellious, but frightened.  He spoke more quietly, “Antryg.  I don’t want to force you.”

            He could force me, I knew.  Having actually had the Master-Spells used against me in years since, I can confirm what I suspected at the time, which is that being compelled to surrender through magical means is not pleasant at all.  He must have seen my resolution faltering, because he delivered the _coup de grace_ , damn him.

             “Come now.  No more of this.”  This was not spoken fiercely.  It was spoken as a father speaks to a son who he expects to see reason.  He was not going to treat me like an enemy, or as a balky child or a beast that needed to be beaten.  In his eyes I was still Antryg, for all that I had sinned terribly. 

            He would have been showing compassion and quite admirable restraint had he not known perfectly well that he was betraying me to torture and death.  Remember, this is a man I might possibly have loved more than my own mother. 

            That bastard.

            My eyes fell shut, and I lowered the tip of my sword.  My limbs felt queerly light as I held the hilt out to him, almost as if my body belonged to someone else.  He took it gently but firmly from my grip.  Behind him, the Council mages and the younger, less-disciplined sasenna breathed again and murmured a bit.  I could hear them start forward through the stiff yellow grass once more.  Then there came the sliding of wool folds, and I opened my eyes to see Salteris holding his hand up, as if holding them back.  They fell still. 

            He beckoned to Implek alone, and he and the sasenna captain walked over to me.  Salteris stood before me then, staff in one hand and sword in the other, and looked up at me.  He held the staff out toward to Implek, who took it.  A mage without his staff has had his power lessened, but Salteris had nothing more to fear from me, and he knew it.  He reached up and put his hand on my shoulder, then applied light pressure to let me know he wanted me to bow my head.  I did so.  He tilted his own face upward and kissed me on the forehead.

            This wasn’t a kiss of absolution.  I’m not sure he ever did forgive me for what I’d done, not totally.  But it was a kiss of peace.  I had surrendered without a fight, and he was no longer enraged at me.  I could survive that, emotionally. 

            I shut my eyes again so I wouldn’t have to watch as Implek raised his sword hand to club me over the back of the head with the pommel.  There was pain and a sea of red filled with sparks, and then blackness.

            I don’t remember much about being dragged back to the Empire and the Silent Tower, which is just as well, really.  I was kept so drugged on power-numbing phylax and poppy draughts that at times I had to be hauled in a litter.  As far as I know, Salteris did not come back to speak to me, which is also just as well.  I did not want to have to look him in the eye and think of what he was dragging me home to.  I doubt he wanted that either. 

            Daur did walk beside my litter once, and I croaked out something to him.  He looked down at me in disgust, and then he turned his eyes forward again and strode off without answering.  Not only had I broken my vows to the Council, but I had drawn a blade on our master.  For him, our friendship was over from that moment, although I daresay he didn’t hate me as much then as he does now. 

            The handoff to the Church was swift and painless, so far as such things go.  Salteris went on ahead to speak to the man who was then Bishop of Kymil, and they made all the arrangements.  I was so drugged that I was almost carried through the very door of the Silent Tower before I had any idea what was going on.  Then the litter was set down, and the door was closed, and my seven years of darkness began. 

            With my powers bound almost into non-existence, I didn’t really feel the hideous vampire draw of the Sigil of Darkness as it was placed on the outside of the door.  That pain would come later.

            First, I had an appointment with the rack. 

            That first time I was too drugged to make any sense, and they gave up fairly soon.  The second time my head was clearer, and I begged to confess to them as I was hauled down to the underground chamber below the Tower’s guardroom.  I made no secret of what I’d done.  After all, I’d done it all entirely in public, and what I hadn’t done in public, I arranged to have spread via rumor.  Letting my fearsome reputation do as much fighting for me as I could manage was entirely the point. 

            The Witchfinders were having none of it, however.  If information wasn’t pulled out of a screaming man little bits at a time, then it couldn’t be true.  There’s no way to possibly describe a torture session to someone who hasn’t experienced one, so I won’t go into it.  But do you know, my right arm still pops out of its socket if I sleep on it awkwardly? 

            The scribe ended up writing a beautiful confession for me, full of rhetorical flourishes, and ecclesiastical vocabulary I wouldn’t use.  His handwriting was especially lovely, too.  And I signed it.  By God, I did.  I’d have signed a stack of ten of them, in triplicate, by the time they were done with me.

            When the resulting death sentence came, I wasn’t surprised, but I was a bit disappointed.  I’d fondly hoped for a simple hanging, drawing and quartering.  I’m a simple man, after all, and excess of ceremony embarrasses me.  But the actual sentence for the commission of treason had baroque touches involving red-hot tongs and the flesh of my breast, among other things. 

            So I waited three weeks after my trial _in absentia_ for the order to take me to the scaffold.  As I understand it, they were going to build some new spectator stands in Kymil, since room had run out at Suraklin’s execution, and one older stand had collapsed under the weight of all the cheering execution-goers. 

            Then one afternoon, I felt the air pressure in the Tower shift slightly as the great outer door was opened at an unexpected time.  I came down the winding steps just in time to sense removal of the Sigil of Darkness—it was like months of oppressive cloud cover briefly replaced by sun.  The relief wouldn’t last long, of course.  I hurried down into the guard room in hopes of getting a precious, brief glimpse of the outdoors.  I got a look at more than that. 

            There, framed in the doorway, stood Salteris, in a cloak and long scarf over his mage’s robe.  Gloves protected his hands, and he looked to be shivering.  When I’d last seen him, I’d thought of him as a lightly-built but sturdy man at the end of his middle years.  Now, for the first time, he looked old to me.  His hair was more silver than I’d remembered, and at places around the roots it was white.  He seemed worn and diminished somehow.  It occurred to me that the hardships of the journey to track me down and capture me had done that to him.

             “Hello, Salteris,” I said quietly.  I was well-wrapped up in particolored robes myself, since the Silent Tower was cold even in the summer, and now it was November.  I strode forward and extended one of my ink-stained writing mitts to him, thinking to steady him over the threshold.  He stepped in unassisted, which is just as well, since two sasenna got in front of me to block my progress before I reached the door. 

             “Hello, Antryg,” he said.

            As they closed the door behind him, we stood and looked at each other for a long moment.  I think we both wondered how much had survived between us.  Each of us felt we had a lot to forgive the other for. 

            Finally he drew breath and said, “The Emperor’s commuted your death sentence.  You’ll be spending your life here.”

            He said it so calmly I almost didn’t hear it at first.  Then I cocked my head to the side as if I hadn’t quite heard him correctly.  “Here . . . ?” I echoed.

             “In the Silent Tower.  You’re the Council’s prisoner, but in the custody of the Church.  Hieraldus wouldn’t hear of your being housed at the Citadel of Wizards.” 

            Oh.  I thought about that.  No being scalded with molten lead, then?  No having pieces of my flesh torn off with pincers?  For weeks, I had been looking at the world as if from the bottom of a deep river, seeing flickering light up above and only dimly aware that sunlight must be playing on the surface of the water.  It was almost as if the death sentence involved someone else, and that made it infinitely easier. 

            Salteris’ words had caused that insulating river to suddenly drain away, and I blinked at him, puzzled, as he seemed to come into focus all at once.  As soon as I could really see him, I was confronted with a man who had entered the winter months of his life, weary and cold and with the smudges of sleeplessness around his coffee-colored eyes. 

            _You did this for me?_   I wondered.  _You went to the Emperor, cap in hand, and somehow talked him into sparing my life?_   It could not have been an easy task.  Hieraldus had reasons to want me dead. 

            The old man in front of me looked at me with a quiet anguish in his eyes.  As the snowflakes melted on the ends of his hair, I could almost hear his thoughts: _Yes.  I did this for you._  

            And for the first time since Gwynne died, I broke down and started to weep.  And then he started to weep as well.  We went to each other in the middle of the guardroom and held each other up as we grieved over what the unkind world had brought us to. 

            Before long, someone brought a chair for him, and then, grudgingly, one for me.  I turned to the stupidest and most suggestible of my guards and said, “Do bring down the teapot and a couple of cups from my study, won’t you, Gish?  There’s a good fellow.”  And he did it.

            Then as Gish served Salteris and me tea, I asked Salteris how he had possibly managed it.  He explained that after a little investigation, it was found that no soldiers or Imperial officials had provably died by means of magic, so I couldn’t have committed treason, as I’d been charged.  And as I’d confessed to, actually, even before they’d tortured me.  Now, I certainly had intended to commit treason.  The fact that I never actually got around to doing it was an incidental thing, but I certainly wasn’t going to push the point! 

            In fact, Salteris had been able to argue that my killing of the thugs in the street was something on the order of justifiable homicide, under the circumstances.  Therefore, all I was really guilty of was breaking my vows to the Council, and that was not punishable by death.  Or at the very least, he, as Archmage, was not choosing to seek the death penalty for me.  He said that Hieraldus had seemed utterly frustrated by his logical maneuverings, but that in the end he couldn’t escape the conclusion that Salteris had come to.  He said he had come as soon as he had the order of commutation in his hand. 

             “Salteris, you’re wonderful,” I cried.  “Really, this is a _tour de force_.  Suddenly, I forgive you everything.”

            Now, I hadn’t actually meant to say that last part out loud.  Even I don’t make a habit of dispensing absolution to people who have justly arrested me and then imposed upon the friendship of an Emperor to save my life.  At least I had the grace to shut my mouth and press my fingers to my lips, as if that could somehow call my words back. 

            Salteris looked thoroughly exasperated, and said, “I thought for a long time about whether I was going to be able to forgive you.  I was terribly, terribly angry at you.  I still am.  And I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that you did what you did.”  He gave me a very steady look, and I couldn’t help fidgeting a bit, worried about what he might say next.  Finally he shook his head and released his breath with a puff of steam.  “But I still care for you, Antryg.  There are those who think I’m a damn fool for it, and maybe I am.  But I still care for you.  You’re a good man.  You’re just not a very good Council wizard.”

            I’m going to have to talk to Joanna about getting me a tombstone large enough to get that last part chiseled on it big enough to read. 

            He visited me twice after that, both times in the spring.  The last time it was almost like things had been in the old days.  We talked over tea for a few hours, and as he was leaving he promised to send me some back issues of a few journals that I’d been unable to keep up with, due to the fact that I didn’t particularly get regular mail in the Silent Tower.  Plus, it wasn’t as if I could pay for them. 

            I heard later that his wife passed away just weeks after I’d seen him. 

            And then he was gone.

            I light candles for him, here and there, as I think to.  I had to miss his formal funeral ceremony, being imprisoned again as I was, and this is my way of honoring him.  As I light each wick, I say words which mean “farewell, my friend” in the Ferr tongue, but which don’t quite translate as “farewell.”  It is in fact a sort of goodbye, but the literal meaning is “Until we meet again.”

            Because that is the only way I can bear to say goodbye to him.

 


End file.
